Discussion

FYI: I'm also here to help answer questions as the co-author of Traction. In my other life I'm the
CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.
Also, for everyone stopping by, you can get the first three chapters for free at http://tractionbook.com/

@caseya in the book we present a framework called Bullseye to figure out what traction channel (out of 19) to focus on to move the needle for your traction goal (as I painted a bit more in this comment: http://www.producthunt.com/books...). When you reach diminishing returns in that effort, you have to restart the process, either because that channel isn't going to get you to that goal, or your goal was attained and now you have a new one, and the channel won't get you to that goal.
At DuckDuckGo, we've gone through that process 6 times, including going through it again right now! In fact, we've even run it more than that because we have a separate traction goal for DuckDuckHack (our open source instant answer platform) where the goal is developer engagement (as opposed to consumer user acquisition).
The channels we've ended up focusing on for various steps from 10,000 searches a day to 10,000,000: SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing (my blog, and then micro-sites), social ads (mainly reddit), PR (online and then TV), and Business Development (integrations into Safari & Firefox). All of these have reached diminishing returns and we're essentially back to the traction drawing board, running Bullseye again internally.

It is my pleasure to introduce Justin Mares for an AMA today at 12pm PST. Justin is the former Director of Revenue at Exceptional, a software company that Rackspace acquired for 8 figures in 2013. He's currently working on his 3rd startup, and runs a growth meetup in San Francisco. Ask questions in advance...... :)!

Amazing book absolutely loved it! Such a great read for a podcaster and has really helped me build The Twenty Minute VC! So Justin, if you had to choose one interview which was your favourite to do, which one was it and why? Can't wait to hear the answer to this one!

@harrystebbings Thanks Harry! How did you use it to grow the Twenty Minute VC?
Favorite interview... that's a hard one. However, I will say I was blown away by Alex Pachikov's interview about how they leveraged partnerships and new channels to grow. They've done a ton of really, really smart stuff behind the scenes to grow.